


you can leave if you want to

by orphan_account



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Addiction, C2E68 Spoilers, Character Study, Gen, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 09:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19315282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: She knows the kind of danger she's in when she cuts the rope. For the record.





	you can leave if you want to

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes we are all just Kind of a Fucking Mess, man. I don't know what this is. 
> 
> a handful of allusions to self-harm contained herein.

It's not that people actually like her better when she's drunk. It's just easier to forget that people don't like her. 

*

Look, Nott knows perfectly well that she can be abrasive. Doesn't know how to talk to people. Doesn't know the right things to say. Her mouth moves and her mind moves and they've never synced up right but it's worse, these days, worse since she became a goblin, like whatever threads she was holding onto to pass as a functional member of society have been snipped. She starts talking and sees the looks on peoples' faces as she keeps talking and knows she should stop talking, _knows_ it, on a deep and fundamental level, and can't stop. 

Caleb says it's something she can work on. She's not quite as sure.

In the middle of the night, halfway through talking to Yasha, she blurts out Caleb's secret, and even as she's saying it, her mind is screaming, _don't say it_ , and out it comes. She hates herself so intensely and fundamentally in that moment she can barely breathe through it. 

Gods above, she needs a drink.

She needs one, and it isn't coming, and she knows, she _knows_ she didn't just leave her flask somewhere. Someone has it. Someone took it from her, and maybe if she's got the time she can find it or maybe someone else has something on them, maybe Beau has a bottle in her bag, or Caleb—if anyone would have gotten her some, it would be Caleb, he would know she couldn't handle being herself without it down here—or maybe Fjord, who would never hand it over, but she's quick, she could be in and out of his bag before he knew it. 

She doesn't do it. Yasha said not to. The low-lying thrum of anxiety that's been building ever since she realized it was missing gets worse, becomes an awful, tangible burning thing that makes her twist her hands together and claw at the side of her neck just to let the endorphins of the pain bring her mind back for a second. She can't do this. Everything about this is too much. 

The others haven't seen the panic attacks. Not really. Sometimes she's loud when she shouldn't be, and she knows she gets clumsy and loses moments and makes more of a mess of things than she means to when she's drinking and she knows that nobody likes being around that and they're polite in the mornings after she drinks too much but they're conspicuously quiet, too, but without that the whole of life is a trigger for a panic attack and maybe some of the others have found better ways to deal, but the only way she knows is to take a shot to let it dull her misfiring survival instincts. 

Without it, it's either lose herself to it entirely or just start finding ways to ground herself that are all teeth or claws on skin. No amount of deep breathing makes an impact. 

It was a little easier, with Yeza, because some of this isn't goblin-made; she's always had this on some level, and when it comes he holds her and rocks her back and forth and tells her to breathe and it's so much easier when it's coming from him to take that command. But he's in Rohsanna, and Luc is somewhere on the road, possibly heading to a place that isn't safe anymore with no real way to change the trajectory on her own, and she is as literally in hell as she can be while still being on this plane, and there is no way to dull any of it because that has been taken from her. 

She sleeps, eventually, but not well, and only dreams of drowning. 

*

She knows the kind of danger she's in when she cuts the rope. For the record. She may not be as smart as Caleb, or Luc, but she understands. Half the group seems to just shrug off the whispers as they pass, but her mind is already a roiling mess—being asked to be the first into danger with nothing to numb the constant fear of her existence and the extra fear of where they are, thinking about the torture Yasha mentioned, the ways in which she's failing as a mother as time passes and Luc moves further towards danger that she created with the letter she and Jester wrote, the ways in which she's failing as a wife as Yeza exists in their house in Rohsanna alone with Jester's pets waiting for her as she goes and throws her life at what very well may be a Hell's creatures, the ways in which she fails the group all the time in never being able to remember to find traps before it's too late, causing them trouble by being imperfect, risking their lives by not being able to hold back words she doesn't want to say. Caduceus would probably make her meditate if he knew the extent of the stress she was carrying. The only thing she would get out of the silence of meditation would be more of a laundry list of reasons to panic. 

There isn't a whisper that doesn't sink into the already-formed cracks. 

When her body pilots itself without her say-so over the edge, it's almost a relief on the way down. No one can hold you accountable for your responsibilities if you've been eaten by an ooze. 

*

But of course, Jester jumps down after her. Grabs her hand, face steeled, and teleports them both out and to safety. Jester thinks she's worth saving.

They're on the other side of the bridge together, alone, for a while.

The past few days, Jester has had a look on her face—sad, a little pitying, caring in her own way. Worried, maybe. And as much as she'd like to take that as a sign she's worth that, there's a deep-down part of her that knows, on some level, that there's something more to it. There's something else causing it. 

_You have my flask_ , she doesn't say, in that moment. For once, she holds the words back.

But for this, this isn't going to be their detective agency. She's going to have to go rogue and investigate her partner on her own. 

She stands at the edge of the bridge, waiting for the others, still holding Jester's hand, and it takes a moment to muster the courage, but she meets the eyes of her best friend and doesn't ask, _did you betray me? If I find out, will you make me forget I did? I know you can, now_. 

The anxiety wells up so strong that she crumples to her knees on the ground. 

She just wants to go home.

**Author's Note:**

> at level 9 trickster clerics get the modify memory spell, which seems like an enormously dangerous thing for jester to have in general, but especially in this context.


End file.
